House appropriators back $55.5 billion Space Force budget, omit reconciliation funds.
Draft defense bill funds Pentagon at requested discretionary levels but excludes $350 billion in proposed reconciliation spending, casting doubt on Golden Dome and other space programs

#WASHINGTON — #Satellite data provider Spire Global has partnered with one of Germany’s largest defense contractors to pursue space-based missile warning and hypersonic threat detection capabilities.

The companies announced a memorandum of understanding June 10 under which Spire and Diehl Defence will explore collaboration on satellite-based intelligence and early warning systems designed to detect ballistic and hypersonic missile threats.

The agreement does not include a contract award or financial terms, but it positions the companies to pursue future opportunities in Europe’s expanding space-security and missile-defense market.

Spire, which operates a constellation of small satellites in low Earth orbit, collects and analyzes radio-frequency signals, weather data, aircraft and maritime tracking information, and other forms of geospatial intelligence.

Spire’s chief executive Theresa Condor said the collaboration combines the company’s satellite and data capabilities with Diehl’s defense expertise to help strengthen security from space for Germany and Europe.

Diehl’s chief executive Helmut Rauch said the goal is to connect intelligence gathered from space-based systems with weapons platforms and military command-and-control networks.

The partnership comes as Europe accelerates efforts to develop sovereign missile-warning capabilities following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and amid growing concerns over ballistic and hypersonic missile threats.

The United States operates extensive missile-warning satellite networks through programs managed by the U.S. Space Force. European nations have historically relied more heavily on U.S. capabilities but are now examining independent space-based sensing architectures as governments seek greater strategic autonomy in defense and intelligence.

Germany has emerged as a key participant in those discussions, creating potential opportunities for companies able to provide satellite-based surveillance and early warning services.

Detecting hypersonic missiles remains one of the most challenging missions for modern militaries. Unlike traditional ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons can maneuver during flight while traveling at speeds exceeding five times the speed of sound, making them more difficult to track and intercept.

The agreement builds on Spire’s investment in Germany. The company recently announced an expansion of its satellite manufacturing facility in Munich intended to support sovereign satellite missions.

#Amazon was relieved of a government deadline to have half of its planned satellite constellation up and running by next month, delaying the risk that regulators might suddenly curb the operation

#NASA astronauts returned to the International Space Station (ISS) after their preventive evacuation to the docked Dragon spacecraft over an air leak on the #ISS Russian segment, Roscosmos Deputy Head for Piloted Programs Sergey Krikalyov said.

"According to our information, the NASA astronauts have returned to the ISS to continue work in normal mode. Nothing endangers the crew’s safety. Earlier, the NASA crew was transferred to the docked Crew Dragon spacecraft for the time of repairs in a transfer chamber," the Roscosmos official said.

NASA Spokesperson Bethany Stevens said earlier on June 5 that NASA had ordered astronauts aboard the International Space Station to transfer to their docked Dragon spacecraft as a measure of precaution as the Russian crew was carrying out repairs on the Zvezda module after detecting new air leaks,

#Roscosmos announced on June 5 that cosmonauts had found two potential air leaks in the Zvezda module. The first leak was quickly sealed and work was underway to seal the other, it said.

#SpaceX denied fast index entry by S&P 500. S&P Global said on Thursday it was not changing the requirements for entry into its major indices, dealing a setback to Elon Musk’s SpaceX by effectively ruling out a swift entry for the world’s biggest-ever IPO into the benchmark S&P 500 index.

Musk has rewritten the IPO playbook for ⁠SpaceX in many ways from planning to give retail investors a bigger role in allocations to pushing for early index inclusion, and structuring governance to preserve strong founder ​control.

The company is raising US$75 billion and targeting a $1.75-trillion valuation that would place it among the top 10 most valuable U.S.-listed firms, even as only a fraction of its shares are available for trading.

But S&P said “exceptions to the financial viability, seasoning, and IWF (investable weight factor) requirements should not be granted solely based on market capitalization.”

To be included in the S&P 500, a company must be profitable under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles in its most recent quarter as well as for the sum of its most recent four quarters, according to one of the rules S&P left unchanged.

SpaceX posted a net loss of $4.94 billion in 2025, even as revenue rose 33 per cent to $18.67 billion.

Investor consultations

S&P had consulted with investors about shortening the time a megacap company must be publicly listed before joining its indexes, waiving minimum float requirements and removing its profitability requirement.

The S&P 500 is Wall Street’s most widely followed benchmark. Passive S&P 500 index funds with trillions of dollars in assets would have been forced to buy up SpaceX shares had rules been changed to admit it to the index.

“It speaks highly of the credibility of S&P Dow Jones Indices to be rules-based and make sure there’s profitability before entrance to the index,” said Art Hogan, chief market strategist at B. Riley Wealth.

“Making exceptions because companies are so large and have been private so long yet are still not profitable, didn’t make a great deal of sense.”

Nasdaq has already made changes that will make it easier for SpaceX, Anthropic and other newly listed megacaps to join its Nasdaq 100 index.

Nasdaq 100 index funds will be forced to buy a sizeable portion of publicly available SpaceX shares when the company joins that index.

Exchange operators have ramped up efforts to boost initial public listings as richly valued technology firms such as SpaceX and AI giants Anthropic and OpenAI edge closer to public offerings, amid growing concerns over a steady decline in the number of U.S.-listed companies.

S&P Global said it would modify entry rules for its broader S&P Total Market Index and Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index, creating a pathway for SpaceX to join those less widely followed indexes.

SpaceX has also already become eligible for inclusion in both the Russell U.S. Equity Indexes and the FTSE Global Equity Index Series under the newly announced fast-entry rules from the index provider FTSE Russell.

Noel Randewich, Pritam Biswas and Shivansh Tiwary, Reuters

#NASA declares its Mars Maven spacecraft dead after six months of silence. The space agency confirmed Wednesday that the mission had ended after more than a decade of observations.

Launched in 2013 to study the red planet’s atmosphere from orbit, Maven mysteriously fell silent in early December after passing behind Mars. Data indicated the spacecraft went into a fast spin, which disrupted its orbit and drained the onboard batteries.

A review board convened by NASA earlier this year concluded that the spacecraft is useless and unable to be recovered. An investigation continues into what caused the problem.

Besides studying Martian weather and observing a stray interstellar comet last year, Maven helped relay information from NASA’s Curiosity and Perseverance rovers on the surface.

Maven’s lead scientist, Shannon Curry of the University of Colorado Boulder, said the spacecraft made a number of “amazing discoveries.”

Maven “has truly advanced our understanding of the Martian atmosphere and evolution,” she said in a statement.

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

#China's #Shenzhou-21 astronaut crew returns to Earth

Blue Origin’s New Glenn #rocket exploded in a massive fireball while undergoing a test on a Florida launchpad Thursday evening, according to video footage taken of the event.

#NASA lays out moon base plans with landers, buggies and drones at the top of the list. The space agency outlined the first phase of its moon base plans on Tuesday, awarding hundreds of millions of dollars in contracts to four U.S. companies.

Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin will provide a pair of landers to deliver moon buggies to the lunar surface, at a spot near the moon’s south pole. These so-called lunar terrain vehicles will be built by Astrolab and Lunar Outpost. Firefly Aerospace, which landed successfully on the moon last year, will deliver the first drones to the moon.

All this hardware is ideally supposed to arrive before the first Artemis astronauts land on the moon, planned for as early as 2028.

During April’s Artemis II mission, four astronauts flew around the moon, traveling deeper into space than the Apollo moon crews did during the late 1960s and early 1970s. For next year’s Artemis III, another team of astronauts will practice docking NASA’s Orion capsule in orbit around Earth with the lunar landers being developed for crews by Blue Origin and Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

NASA is targeting Artemis III for mid-2027, with a landing by two astronauts following as soon as 2028. The moon base’s second phase, from 2029 into the early 2030s, will start building up the permanent infrastructure, including a power grid. As for when the base will be ready to support astronauts for extended periods in specialized permanent habitats, that’s expected sometime in the 2030s, during the third phase.

“Then we’ll be able to say, ‘Hey, we’re permanently here and we’re not giving it up,’” said NASA’s moon base program executive Carlos Garcia-Galan.

Garcia-Galan envisions a moon base sprawling over hundreds of square miles, with a perimeter marked by drones, dubbed MoonFall, stationed at the corners.

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said these territory markers are meant to be respectful of other countries’ spacecraft and equipment that might be nearby. He expects reciprocity in the matter.

The goal of the moon base is to encourage a lunar economy while conducting scientific research and laying the foundation for a Mars expedition, Isaacman stressed.

“For those waiting patiently, the grand return is close at hand and we will not slow down,” Isaacman said. “We are really just getting started.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press

The #internet was ‘too expensive’ too . Every new infrastructure platform can look uneconomic at first. Early systems are often bespoke, supply chains immature and scaling doesn’t yet exist. The result: cost structures can appear daunting, if not irrational, when judged by the standards of those more traditional models.